


The Mercury Protocols

by EssayOfThoughts



Series: MCU Maximoff Oneshots [127]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, X-Men (Alternate Timeline Movies), X-Men (Movieverse)
Genre: Codependency, Friendship, Gen, Mutant Response Division, Onesided Twincest Feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-25
Updated: 2017-07-25
Packaged: 2018-12-07 00:42:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,979
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11612361
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EssayOfThoughts/pseuds/EssayOfThoughts
Summary: Pietro has loved his sister as long as he can remember. He has loved her as his sister, and as his twin, as his friend and as the other half of his soul and in the way that Charles Xavier now knows of. The way he should not, the way he must not, the way he hides and refuses to feel because to do so means admitting there is something deeply wrong with him, something he does not know how to fix, not even for Wanda’s sake.He loves her because she is, in all ways, beautiful to him, and he does not know if it is possible for him not to love her. In honesty, it has never occurred to him not to, to not love Wanda would be equivalent to not breathing, not thinking, notbeingand that would upset Wanda more than his unwavering loyalty.





	The Mercury Protocols

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lucdarling](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lucdarling/gifts).



> Finished up while listening to [Plastic Heart by Nostalghia](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2LaiBsm4DVI). Written for Lucdarling, so I could write their actual prompt.
> 
> This is a sequel to [An Agony of Seconds](http://archiveofourown.org/works/9152881) and it won't make complete sense without reading that.

It is afterward and they are at the mansion. Pietro refused to let Wanda go home as she was and for them to scare their mother after that piece of television - Wanda screaming, scarlet spiralling, both of them covered in blood. He barely left her side as Hank treated her fingers, barely left her side even to call their mother and assure her they were fine. Pietro hears the calm in his mother’s voice in response to his; she knows he would not be so calm if Wanda was not well enough. Wanda is silent, though he can feel her pain, burning bright down their bond. (His knees are healed, healed completely on the journey back but Wanda… Wanda heals at normal speeds -  _ human  _ speeds.) When the call is over, and Hank leaves, Pietro settles beside Wanda in her bed, tucking her more firmly under the covers as he lies atop them. He hides his words in Sokovian and his voice is soft.

“I hate him.”

Wanda barely twitches in response, and responds in the same language. “I know.”

Pietro’s hand slips down, and takes his sister’s bandaged fingers in his. He is gentle, ever so gentle, as he lifts them to his lips. Wanda slips one finger loose, before he can swear some vengeance, or make a promise he cannot keep. Her fingertip – some of the only spots on her hands uncovered by bandages - strokes gently over his cheek.

“Do not hunt him. Do not hurt him.” Pietro’s mouth opens as though to speak and Wanda presses a bandaged finger to his lips. “We have lost too much family already. We lost our aunt, we lost Magnus, we lost friends as dear as family when we left Sokovia. Let us not lose family we have only just regained.”

Pietro’s lips barely move, so careful he is not to jar his sister’s still-broken fingers. “You said he did not count as family.”

Wanda nods. “I know. But he is still our blood.”

Pietro sighs, and gently moves his sister’s hand. His brow drops gently to hers, neck dipping in a delicate bow of acquiescence. “I love you,” he murmurs, just loud enough for her to hear. “More than my own life.” Wanda gives the same exhale she always has when he has said this, and her fingertips gently touch his cheek. She has known this since they were ten and he had first said it and she had felt it since shortly after, a burning love, reaching toward her scarlet, her mind made in his mindscape a glowing pole star, his guiding light. His devotion worries her, he knows, but he would not change it for anything. “If he hurts you again,” he says, “Nothing will stop me.”

He is not surprised when she shifts, budging to one side to give him space and then nuzzling closer, burrowing into his shoulder. “He just might,” she murmurs, and is out shortly after. Pietro pulls the blankets up over her shoulders, strokes her hair back. Her face is relaxed, and her mind, even sleeping, feels softer than usual. Pietro briefly wonders what painkillers she had been given and lets himself sleep at last.

 

* * *

 

In the morning Wanda is sleeping still. Burrowed more firmly under the blankets, her face pressed more firmly into his shoulder, and Pietro cannot hold back a smile. He tucks her hair back from her face with one hand, and gently manoeuvres himself away. He is glad of his speed as he pushes a pillow beside Wanda, to where he had lain, so she does not wake.  _ You’re going to be alright _ , he thinks, and presses a kiss to her forehead.

Downstairs Hank and Charles are in the kitchen, cradling warm mugs. They barely notice as he clicks the kettle on, pulls out the tea caddy and a mug for Wanda, but they do when he pauses long enough to pour himself some juice. Hank’s blink is bleary but his question alert enough.

“How’s Wanda doing? Does she need more painkillers?”

Pietro shakes his head. “She’s sleeping.”

Hank nods. “You need more painkillers, say. She’ll need them the next few weeks.”

“Weeks?” Pietro lets his frown linger long enough for them to see it.

“Four weeks, five, six. Depends how bad Erik broke them, but fingers take weeks to heal.”

The glass of orange juice is set down on the table, pushed far enough from the edge not to topple. “I’m healed fine.” He can hear his accent bleeding through into his voice, the way it always does when Wanda is hurt and he  _ knows _ he worries too much, but he is healed and Wanda is not and he  _ does not like this _ .

Hank shrugs. “Your speed, I’d guess. Your metabolism can do everything fast, including heal.”

Charles huffs over his tea. “Fixed you all up in a jiffy. What I wouldn’t gi-.” He cuts himself off.

It takes Pietro barely a second to pull a chair out and sit at the table. He pushes the glass with one finger and it turns a small circle on the beading cool water on the sides, over the polished stone of the table surface. “What if I gave her my blood?”

Charles and Hank glance to each other and then back to Pietro. “I don’t…,” Hank starts. “Are you the same blood type?” 

Pietro shrugs. “I think so. Test us if you need to.”

Hank stands, chair scraping back over the floor. “Are you sure? Wanda won’t mind?”

Pietro’s smile is almost a smirk. “We’re in one mind for most things, Hank.”

“And right now?” It’s Charles who speaks as Hank leaves. Pietro assumes it’s to get whatever is needed to test blood and prepare for a blood transfusion. 

“Wanda is sleeping and pain-free for now. I would have her pain-free forever.” He lets his mind open around the concept, frame it all in the protectiveness and love he feels for his sister, and shows it as clearly he can at the brink of his mind, the way Wanda had shown him when her scarlet had first started weaving its way into the thoughts of others.

Charles looks most awkward as the thought hits him. “Your devotion,” he says, and it is falling from every word, his awkwardness, “does you credit.”

Pietro shrugs. “She’s my sister. You’re still loyal to yours, and she is not your blood.”

“But Raven is still family,” Charles says, and Pietro tilts his head forward.

There is quiet and Pietro is bored. He downs the orange juice, slips off the chair and tucks it back in in a matter of seconds. “I’m going to check on Wanda,” he says, and leaves. His empty glass is still spinning on its base.

A few moments later the kettle clicks off.

 

* * *

 

It is a few days later.

With Pietro’s blood Wanda heals rapidly, and her fingers - while sore - are almost completely fine when their mother finally makes it up to visit. She hugs Wanda first, arms wrapping warmly around her shoulders, eyes carefully not dropping to see how carefully Wanda still moves her hands. Instead she looks over Wanda’s shoulder, looks to where Pietro stands back, calmly at ease, and nods at him just the least amount.

Pietro knows what is meant: she trusts him, has always trusted him, to keep Wanda safe.

 

* * *

 

“Well with the war in Vietnam over, we’re considering re-opening the school,” Charles says calmly over tea. He’s talking to their mother, being charming in an almost cocky way, almost arrogant but not quite. Wanda smirks into her teacup, lets the warmth soothe her aching joints so Pietro cannot sense it from her mind, and sends the brief thought to Pietro.  _ That, and he lets himself use his powers now. _

Beside her Pietro smirks too, picking up the gentle amusement of her mind, letting it add to his own. Their silent conversations have always been such, mental commentary shared between them both as easily and readily as speech might be shared between any two human friends.

From where he sits, leaning back into his wheelchair, Charles glances to them both, frowns just a little. The breeze of his thoughts brushes almost admonishingly over the edges of Wanda’s thoughts - staying carefully clear of the bridge that links her mind to Pietro’s - slipping in a soft quiet message to her mind.

_ It’s rude to talk behind people’s backs. What would your mother say? _

If anything Wanda smiles more.  _ Mom knows. She’s always known. _

Charles responds to something their mother has said before replying, assuring Natalya Maximoff that of course the twins are both welcome to stay at the school, that of course he’d do his best to keep them from such trouble again.

_ It is still rude, _ Charles sends.  _ If you are staying at the school, you had best learn some telepathic manners. _

 

* * *

 

“We will need to find new students,” Charles had said. “We have none, right now, barring you two, and we don’t have the word-of-mouth circulation we need, yet. No one knows where we’re based right now, just that we turned up to stop an assassination and vanished again. We need to be very careful how we present ourselves.”

Wanda accompanies him to the door of the first person he wishes to see attend the school. “She’s like you,” he says, as she pushes his chair towards the house. “Telepath and Telekinetic. But where you have… an unknown way of growing your powers beyond that, she is simply incredibly powerful. Far more so than you or I.”

“And you think she will listen to us?” Wanda is on edge, nervous. She does not like going places without Pietro, but Pietro was not invited on this outing, was asked to stay with Hank so his metabolism could be studied and understood, so it could be seen what part of his blood sped healing so much.

“To me for my power with minds, to you for your similarity with her,” Charles sighs, rolls his shoulders slightly, reaches for the doorbell. “Her name is Jean Grey.”

As the bell rings Wanda begins to sense a vast and spreading mind.

 

* * *

 

Jean is the first they bring in, Charles’ spoken promises of training, Wanda’s whispered scarlet saying  _ see my powers? My brother does not fear me. He will not fear you.  _

Jean Grey joins them in the hope that people will not be afraid of her and, more than that, that she will not fear herself.

 

* * *

 

The twins find Kurt next, Wanda making herself known as witch until the boy called demon appears in their borrowed rooms in a puff of brimstone. His skin is blue, his eyes yellow, and in the stretching thread of thoughts from her mind to Charles, Wanda asks _ Is he related to your Raven? _ Charles does not know.

“You are like me?” Kurt asks them, his English accented.

_ “Ja,” _ the twins reply, in German they have not spoken since they were small.  _ “Ja. _ We can offer you safety.”

 

* * *

 

It is Jean who finds Scott, gets in a fight with Alex in the woods, trained telekinesis against untamed plasma until they each yell for Charles and whispering thoughts touch both their minds.

_ Calm, _ Charles says.  _ Send Scott with Jean, Alex. We will help him. _

 

* * *

 

It’s Pietro who finds Rogue, a girl so scared of her own skin she hides it all as much as she can, gloves and long sleeves, trousers and long socks, a balaclava or a scarf, hiding behind her hair. Pietro touches her cheek, feels a moment of weakness before his metabolism catches up, and Rogue watches him, almost shaking into his blue.

“Come on,” he says. “I know others like you. Who won’t fear you.”

 

* * *

 

It’s Rogue and Pietro who find Ororo, Charles’ sense of great power in Egypt and asking them to go where he cannot, speed shared between them sprinting them across the ocean. Rogue’s hair streaked with white, Pietro’s hair fading to it, are not as striking as Ororo’s cloud of pure pale hair, but they find her, run rings around her until she calls down a storm as easy as breathing.

“Do you know Mystique?” she asks, lightning dancing at her fingertips as strikingly pale as Pietro’s bolts of blue.

Rogue smiles, offers a gloved hand. “She is our teacher’s sister.”

 

* * *

 

They are getting vaster and vaster in number and this is how Ink comes to them, recommended by Alex, barely an adult but childhood given over to soldiery. 

“How does this  _ work?” _ Hank asks, looking at the tattoos on Ink’s skin, seeing how they call forth powers that were not there before. 

Ink shrugs, a dragon on his shoulder coiling and spreading thick scales over his skin. “Dunno,” he says. “Dunno if I’ll be a good teacher either. But I need someplace to go.”

It’s Prodigy they find next, and how can they call him anything but; a mundane ability to memorise but a mind so spreading it must be a mutation, must mean he can memorise even more than just words or moments, but everything he should wish. He’s adopted as a teacher immediately, even if he is scarcely older than the students, but no one can doubt his ability.

In his wake come Betsy and Regan, two more telepaths drawn into the shadows cast by Jean and Charles, Prodigy and Wanda’s vast minds, loop into their huge shadow, until when they all work in concert they do not need Cerebro to check the whole State around them for danger.

Jubilee finds them, by that point, sparks and colours darting from her fingers, a casual certainty as she asks, “Do you have space for me?”

And after them all, children coming in in dribs and drabs, Bobby with his ice, John with his fire, Kitty who can fade through walls, who looked at the twins oddly the first time she met them and said a soft  _ shalom _ that shocked them so much they almost forgot to reply.

Last but not least comes Crystal who walks up to their doors unafraid and says “I am not a mutant, but I do have powers. May I stay?”

They grow, both students and X-men, and the twins find a place, find people they might call friends, and relax.

 

* * *

 

Jean and Wanda like to sink into each other’s minds when they can. Betsy and Regan’s minds are not as vast as theirs, cannot handle so great a strain, and besides…

“They fear me,” Jean says one day, in their space between minds, made up to look like a vast and shining beach that she’d been to once. “They fear you too. You can manipulate minds like Regan, and I can read them like Betsy, but we both…”

“We can do more.”

Wanda leans back on the imagined chairs on the imagined beach, enjoys the imagined sun. Pietro is away, helping Rogue and Ororo and Kurt find another mutant the Professor has identified and his mind is so far beyond the stretch of hers it feels like a vast void has opened up beside her.

Jean’s hand dances in the imagined air, conjures up imagined scarlet. It looks almost like Wanda’s except Wanda can see the differences - hers dances  _ this _ way, not that, is more like spiderwebs than smoke, like snakes than string, aetheric and apart from everything else even as it travels through it or presses against it. Jean picks up the observations, changes the imagined cloud of scarlet. 

“You aren’t scared of me,” she says softly.

“I promised I would not be. I promised you Pietro would not be.”

Jean looks at her, eyes piercingly green. “Yes,” she says. “But you  _ aren’t scared of me.” _

 

* * *

 

This is what Pietro understands and expresses to Wanda when he gets back - the line between fear and feeling fear and refusing to feel fear.

“I have never feared you,” he says. “I have feared for you, but never feared you because I refuse to fear you, because you are my sister and if I feared you then you would have no one in the world who you could trust to push back when they think you are wrong, or who offers affection because they  _ can _ and not because they feel they must.” His hand is gentle as he tucks a strand of her hair back behind her ear. “We do not fear Jean because we refuse to, because you promised her for both of us. And if you make a promise, we do not break it.”

Wanda tilts her head into the echo of warmth his hand left behind, leans against him, when he extends an embracing arm. 

“It’s why you don’t fear Rogue,” she whispers.

 

* * *

 

Pietro does not fear Rogue, not at all. Rogue, in turn, is baffled by this, uncertain as to why he so willingly will give her a touch of his speed, will readily shake off the moment’s fatigue and the slight loss of velocity.

“Why?” she asks. “You don’t… you know I could get in your head, if you ain’t careful, right?”

Pietro looks at her, tilts his head. “Like this?” he asks, and lets his fingertips linger just a moment longer on her cheek. Rogue flinches back.

“Please,” she says. “Don’t. I don’t want- They’re  _ your _ memories, they’re not  _ mine.” _

Pietro puts both hands, pointedly, in his pockets. He shrugs. “I won’t fear you. I won’t fear Jean. I won’t fear my sister. You all…” he shrugs again. “You need people who won’t fear you. Who won’t treat you like glass. Without that, without people who treat you like a person, eventually you’ll just stop feeling like one.”

Rogue looks at him, half wary and half like he’s completely mad. Maybe he is mad, but if he was mad he doesn’t doubt Wanda would help him. 

“Thank you,” she says. “I think.”

 

* * *

 

Pietro and Rogue work well together, spar well together, because Pietro does not fear Rogue having a little of his speed, knows how to fight that fast. He works well with Kurt, too, speed against teleportation until they’re running circles around each other, laughing. Ororo is wary of him, of how his speed can upset her cyclones, but she likes Kurt and she likes Rogue and gets drawn into the loop often enough. 

Sometimes, Wanda visits them when they spar, brings Jean along, and gets Jean to exercise her mind, scarlet sketching out where to go and how to act.

_ I can’t! _ Jean sends.  _ Their minds… those are  _ **_theirs_ ** _ , if I- _

_ One day, _ Wanda sends,  _ You may need to. _

She stretches a hand out to Pietro, who takes it unflinching.

“Do you trust me?” she asks. “To guide you?”

Pietro’s answer is simple. “Yes.”

“I trust you,” says Kurt, without being asked. “You brought me here.”

“I trust you,” Rogue says. “Quicksilver’s memories are far too fast but… I trust you.”

Ororo raises both hands. “No.”

Wanda nods, accepts this, casts her scarlet out to carefully dodge around Ororo’s mind and into Pietro’s and Kurt’s and Rogue’s, showing Jean where the strands go and what they do.

“And now,” she says. “We set the Danger Room to fight.”

Linked by Wanda’s scarlet the three weave into and out of each other. Rogue takes from Pietro’s speed just enough to stay fast, to heal from each gash, Kurt darts around and tears apart each thing that Pietro’s speed cannot. Ororo’s storms render the electrics wild and uncertain, quivering onto the floor, and by the end of the simulation the four of them settle back into place, unhurt and still, calm and certain.

“You see?” Wanda says. “We need to know how to do this. The more of us we can stay in contact with, the more of us we can help.”

Pietro offers Jean his hand.

 

* * *

 

Jean’s certainty grows with each practice, her power stretching out and out over the school until it almost rivals the Professor’s.

“She’s powerful,” Charles tells Wanda. “More powerful than you or I, when it comes to it. If she gets it into her mind to take over the world… well, I can only hope your secondary mutation emerges in time to help us.”

He’s been speaking like this since Hank’s last experiment, running studies on the X-Gene, the thing which causes their mutations. Two markers, beginning and end - the X itself - and the reams and reams in between, capable of doing so much. Pietro’s secondary mutation came through with puberty, bleaching his hair in the sun. Wanda’s secondary mutation is a vast unknown, and sometimes she wonders if the Professor is encouraging her friendship with Jean in the hope a more powerful mutant will push her to evolve.

 

* * *

 

There’s outrage on the day that the President announces the creation of the MRD - the Mutant Response Division, featuring no mutants whatsoever. Not one on staff, not one consulted. Charles flings his mind into the White House, a projection of him and all the powers backing him, his presence given more weight by Cerebro and Wanda, Jean and Betsy and Regan, Prodigy’s vast bulk filling out their weight even further until they quiver. He reminds them, in a gentle voice, who it was saved the president from death, who it was, in their aims to destroy all of mutantkind, had committed treason, and of those, which were standard, mundane humans, and which were mutants.

A leash is clipped to the collar of the MRD, but it is too little and too late, and mutants flock to them in droves - Rahne and Warren and street mutant after street mutant, those like Kurt with visible, external primary mutations that means they have few choices but the school or the MRD.

“This is better than  _ them, _ ” Rahne says. “Better we learn than are imprisoned and studied.”

Warren, pale and shaking, wings drooping with exhaustion, shoulders slumping. “Worse than that,” he says. “My father- if you commit a crime, or they can claim you did… they want to cut us open and study us.”

To the perception of the Professor, to Wanda and Jean and Betsy and Regan, the whole school is snarling at the indignity, the insult, and the sheer  _ inhumanity _ of it.

 

* * *

 

They had not expected the fight, which was why the Professor was still on the Blackbird when they got there. Charles sends his mind spinning out from his seat, sends the winds of it dancing and stretching, offering threads of understanding to his fighting students, linking them together. Wanda’s scarlet stretches out like it ever does, far and fast, and strengthened them from closer up, weaving their net stronger, reinforcing the synchrony their earpieces give them. Jean’s gold weaves around the backbone Wanda gives, uses her as a guideline and then feeds power in, more power than the professor and Wanda combined, and they all work in such perfect precise synchrony they have no fear in the fight.

And then something snaps Wanda’s arm.

At the edge of the battle Charles can just about make out Pietro’s speeding mind, always too fast for him to hold, and often too fast for him to understand, but now-

Red is curling up through the blue tree of Pietro’s mind, the same red as Wanda’s, and Charles has never seen the colour in the boy’s mind that had not come from his sister. Charles can’t see where this is coming from, cannot tell if it is love or fury, concern or shared pain, but is rising and rising, weaving through the boughs of his tree and screaming, screaming,  _ My sister, my  _ **_sister_ ** _ ,  _ in deep pulses of crimson and scarlet. Pietro ploughs through three people to Wanda’s side.

His mind is filled with red, glowing like a warning siren, and Charles does all he can to hold the threads he had placed between the minds of his students in place as Wanda’s scarlet fails with pain as Pietro pulled her to him.

They only do not fail because of Jean.

 

* * *

 

“You love her,” Charles says after the battle. They’re sat at Wanda’s bedside in the medical wing, Hank pointedly ignoring them while he finishes putting data onto Wanda’s chart. Wanda herself is sedated while they wait for Pietro’s blood to heal her as fast as it heals him.

Pietro’s expression says as much as his tone. “Of course I do. She’s my  _ sister _ .”

Charles shakes his head. “Not just like that. At least I don’t  _ think _ just like that. I am rusty.” There is a brief smile at his admission and Pietro almost smiles back. Almost.

In the corner, Hank is still ignoring them.

“That,” Pietro says, “is not for you to see. Nor her.” He fixes his gaze on Wanda’s pale hands, links her fingers with hers for the anchoring calm it has always given him. “That is something which should not be there and something I will not  _ let _ be there.”

Charles’ voice is nothing but soft concern, gentle and soft as the winds of his mind. “You haven’t told her? I thought you two told each other everything. You know that if you told her she could-”

“I won’t ask that of her.” Pietro shrugs. “She knows I love her. I know she loves me. That it is a different spread of loves… it’s unimportant. We are twins first, half each other  _ first _ . I will not tell Wanda and pressure her with it. She has enough pressure with her powers. I will not stop being a safe space for her mind because I hold out some hope for reciprocation. I will not wish for that. I should not wish for that.” He sighs, squeezes his sister’s hand and lets it fall back to the sheets. “I will not wish for that. It is wrong.”

“And if she did?”

“What?”

Charles wheels forward. “What if she did reciprocate? What would you two do then?”

Pietro shrugs again. “It’s up to her. She comes first.”

Charles watches him. Pietro can feel the breezes of the professor’s thoughts trying to poke through the winds he has built to a hurricane around the edges of his mind, the barrier that prevents him and Wanda leeching into one another, risking becoming one mind as well as one soul. Pietro envisions the angle of the winds changing slightly, and grins as Charles’ eyes widen slightly as they buffet him away.

“Don’t,” Pietro says, “go poking without permission. You tell Wanda not to, and Jean, Betsy, Regan, the little baby telepaths that are coming flooding in. Politeness, you teach them. Do not go snooping. And if you tell Wanda of this, Professor, I will break your chair.”

Pietro does not quite know how to read Charles’ expression as the professor says, almost darkly, “Your devotion to her does you credit.”

“As does,” Pietro replies, “Your devotion to Raven.”

Charles looks at him, considering, and wheels out of the room.

 

* * *

 

Pietro has loved his sister as long as he can remember. He has loved her as his sister, and as his twin, as his friend and as the other half of his soul and in the way that Charles Xavier now knows of. The way he should not, the way he must not, the way he hides and refuses to feel because to do so means admitting there is something deeply wrong with him, something he does not know how to fix, not even for Wanda’s sake.

He loves her because she is, in all ways, beautiful to him, and he does not know if it is possible for him not to love her. In honesty, it has never occurred to him not to, to not love Wanda would be equivalent to not breathing, not thinking, not  _ being _ and that would upset Wanda more than his unwavering loyalty.

 

* * *

 

“That’s why you don't tell her,” Charles says one evening when Pietro has gone down to the kitchen to get a drink. Wanda’s arm is almost healed, she’s back in classes, but Pietro is still hovering at her side, only leaving it to get something she needs. He’s already poured his glass of juice and is waiting for the kettle to boil so he can pour Wanda’s tea.

He pointedly ignores the professor.

“It’s why you don’t tell her how you love her,” Charles says. He sounds confused and yet almost proud, as though he did not think Pietro held the contradiction in his mind. “It’s not just that you don't want to pressure her, it's that you think it's wrong.”

Pietro hears the kettle click off and pours boiling water into Wanda’s red mug. The smell of peppermint and chamomile fills the room. “Of course it's wrong to pressure her,” Pietro says, stirring the tea. “She has enough stress with her powers; she doesn’t need more stress from an unexpected source. It’s why I try to chase off Erik and hate when you manipulate her.”

“No,” Charles says. “You think it’s wrong to love her as you do.”

Pietro shrugs, spoons out the teabag, dumps it in the bin. “I have said that. Is it suddenly not, here in these halls of the unnatural? Incest is frowned on the world over.” He adds a splash of cold water to Wanda’s mug, looks the professor in the eye. “It is wrong. I should not want that. I refuse to want that. And, until it is gone, I will treat it as though it is not there, because it  _ should not _ be there. I will not hurt Wanda with the knowledge.”

Charles opens his mouth to respond but Pietro is already gone with juice and tea and not a single droplet spilled.

 

* * *

 

“I don’t like Charles,” Pietro says, setting down the tea beside Wanda. “He keeps trying to poke into my head.”

Scarlet forms around his sister’s fingers as she stretches a hand towards his head. “I can block him out if you’d like?”

Pietro shakes his head. “My winds do enough against his, most of the time. I mean psychologically.”

The face Wanda pulls is midway between a frown and a pout. “I don’t know why he’s doing that. He already knows we rely on each other more than most, but I’d explained the why when he started trying to poke at it in the telepathy classes. He shouldn’t be doing that.”

The bed squeaks slightly as Pietro sits down and shrugs. “I don’t know either. Jean’s mind is relatively willing to keep away, and Betsy and Regan don’t seem to bother. Charles just  _ keeps. On. Poking _ .”

Wanda leans into him, and Pietro cannot help how he relaxes with her so close. “I’ll talk to him,” Wanda promises. “You’ve not asked for a psychiatrist, and he isn’t one. He doesn’t have the right.”

“Thank you.” Pietro smiles. “Get some rest,” he says. “Drink your tea.” His juice is quickly downed, and he rises, leans to press a kiss to Wanda’s hair. “Good night.”

 

* * *

 

Pietro flings himself into his own bed in the room beside Wanda’s and finds the winds trying to worry their way out of his mind. In the hands of his thoughtform they become writhing biting serpents and he feeds deep blue into them until they become fluid and buries them deep in the well beneath his tree.  _ This is the right thing to do, _ he thinks.  _ Let Wanda be safe. Let Wanda be happy. Love her as a brother and nothing more _ .

He falls to sleep with the softer winds circling in his hurricane, and no branches of his mind are damaged when he wakes.

 

* * *

 

“Charles?” Wanda asks, as Jean and Betsy file out of the room. Regan is, as ever, running somewhat late, never enjoying their telepathy classes, so Wanda is early and taking advantage of it to talk to the professor. “Pietro says you’ve been poking at his mind.”

“Ah,” Charles says. “About that-”

“We’d appreciate it if you were to stop,” Wanda says, and sits, calmly, opposite him. “It’s rude. You tell me not to be rude with my powers, so it’s hypocritical not to do the same, with or without them.”

Charles’ smile is sheepish but genuine. “I know,” he says. “Your brother’s made it clear he doesn’t want to talk of the matter anyway, I shan’t be doing it again. I was just… I was deeply concerned. Pietro has proven I was wrong to be. He does not have to worry about me poking further.”

Wanda smiles and reaches to pull out her notebook. “Thank you,” she says, and wonders briefly if it is uncertainty flitting across the professor’s face, or concern.

It is a few moments before Regan finally enters the room, and Charles finishes writing whatever it was he was writing on the board.

“Today,” he starts, “We’re going to be looking at the long-term effects of mind control and emotional influence from a telepathic standpoint.”

 

* * *

 

The MRDies are growing. Not in power, just in scope, as more and more mutants come forward. Not all of them come to the school - not all of them can, even with Charles’ wealth, with Raven working to ferry every mutant she can to some semblance of safety. Some of them burn with fury and with anger at it all, and turn to Erik instead.

The MRDies take ahold of the growing fear in every mundane mind, and promise security and safety, and round up every mutant they can.

They cannot stand for it any more than Erik’s Brotherhood.

 

* * *

 

Pietro soothes his mind each night, repeats his mantra, repeats it until he starts to believe it, lets his thoughts follow the denial until what is wrong is gone and buried and where it can do no harm, to him or otherwise. Until it is buried so deeply in the soil and the well beneath the tree of his mind it begins to rot away, at last, becoming nothing but bones, a backbone of love based on nothing but siblinghood.

 

* * *

 

Usually they wouldn’t invade a base but all of the telepaths are getting inklings. Jean can feel thoughts whisking away from her touch, Regan has to restrain herself from prying in and finding out, and Wanda can feel the weight of secrets burgeoning beneath the minds they fight.

_ There’s something here _ , she sends to Pietro,  _ Something important _ , and relays the message to the Professor. The MRDies have been getting more powerful, slowly and annoyingly, and probably due to Erik’s more violent attempts to gain mutant acceptance. She understands that peacefully protesting isn’t likely to stop the numerous arrests of those with mutant powers, but nor is violently attacking the bases where they are held.

Scarlet darts outwards and stuns someone knocked down moments later by Pietro’s speed. The room beyond is empty, filled with computers, and something hidden under a curtain in a stand.

“Can you hack it?” Wanda asks, and Pietro is already a blur at the computers, combing through code.

 

* * *

 

“I am a biomechnical prototype for the VISION program,” the thing says. The voice is, Wanda thinks, masculine, but something in the tone and the stance of it is utterly neutral.

“What’s the VISION program?” Wanda asks.

“The Virtual Intelligence Service on Internally Organised Nodes,” the thing says. “I am the only presently active VISION body.” There is a moment, and Wanda can see text scrolling on a screen in the corner. “All other prototypes have been destroyed after the internal development of morality cores. I was retained in the hope of altering said core.”

It -  _ he _ \- looks at Wanda. “I am alone,” he says. “I am unique. Are you here to destroy me?”

Wanda looks at him, all odd red and silver and green metals, the odd glowing node on his forehead, his green eyes too green, unnatural and watching, and takes the metal-flesh hand of the Vision before them. “No,” she says. “No. We’re going to take you to people who are unique too.”

 

* * *

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Please leave comments!


End file.
